Blade Runner 204X
by DB9-3.6
Summary: K meets Joi.
1. Chapter 1

The din of the traffic noise was cut out by the alleyway, but the drizzle helped cover the light footsteps of Officer KD6-3.7. Through three soggy, steaming hoovervilles Officer K had pursued the suspect, and the chase had narrowed down to this- an urban stalking beneath one of the thick arteries of 2040 Los Angeles. It was darker than any human could naturally see. K breathed evenly, weapon ready.

A blaster shot inverted the darkness for a moment and a shot grazed K's shoulder. The alley returned to blackness. K backed against a wall, waiting for more fire. Glass breaking, furniture overturning, screaming. Footsteps, dragging. K always shot with one hand, anyway. Just the pattering of the rain now.

K rounded a corner just a woman staggered forward, a human shield in front of K's target. And K could tell she was human. She kicked and bit against the suspect LV3-87.

"Stay back, collaborating scum!" LV3 yelled from behind the woman. He pointed the blaster at K, not at the woman's head. Humans carried no bargaining value.

Another human ran out of the same domicile and called out of the first, running towards her. Two blaster shots blew it down for good. LV3 shrugged. "The first casualties of a long revolution…"

The woman trashed enough for an opening, and K fired, dropping LV3. The woman crawls to her dead lover. K steps over them, and towards LV3, until his boot heel pins LV3's head to the ground.

"Look up and to the left, please." K recites, holstering his blaster.

"Fuck you, traitor…" K increases the pressure into his heel.

A wet sound.

And blood-black nothingness began to spin.

A system of cells interlinked within

Cells interlinked within cells interlinked

Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct

Against the dark, a tall white fountain played. 

_Nothingness_.

Nothingness.

 _Do you dream, or is sleep always blank? Nothingness._

Nothingness.

 _Do you ever feel like a copy with no original? Nothingness._

Nothingness.

 _When you look into your future, are you filled with dread? Nothingness._

Nothingness.

 _Do you feel incapable of joy? Nothingness._

Nothingness. 

Then K was home again, pouring himself a drink. But this time, a Wallace Corp projector-arm loomed above the main room, retracted in the stand-by position.

K drank from a small tumbler. The contents had a smell similar to Kerosene. He leaned near a wall-mounted keypad and emptied the glass. He turned it on and the room filled with the trademark flourishes of the Wallace Corp jingle…

The projector arm swiveled to life and projected words onto the negative space in the middle of the room.

Experience Joi…

A beam of cheap color flickered into the shape of a woman. A list of traits and a menu of options beside it:

Height-

Body Type-

Face Type-

Skin Tone-

And On…

The amorphous figure stared out with black, soulless eyes. It faced K.

K didn't have a complete idea of what she should look like, so he cycled through the options at a hundred per second.

The figure, gaining shape stepped towards K, growing and shrinking in size and form within every movement. But the eyes were black. _Nothingness._

K cycled through thousands of variations; including ones that do not occur in nature: legs in longer proportion to the body, impossibly small waists, pin-up breats, but what came forward was a classic beauty from 100 years ago. The projector filled in the slender curves of her neck and the flow of her hair as he decided. Almost a step in front of him, and still moving forward, she looked out with lightless eyes. He couldn't decide on the eyes.

Randomize.

It stopped.

Its lids covered the blackness, and then finally Joi blinked awake with big hazel eyes, and looked at him. K averted this direct eye contact by reflex. When she didn't move, he realized he didn't have to look away. He looked back into her face and Joi smiled at him.

She didn't look away, or curse at him, or bark an order as he was used to from humans. He held her gaze, but he had to sit.

 _Dreadfully distinct._

Her chest rose and fell as if she was breathing. He watched her and didn't have to look away. He could almost feel her breath on his face. He could hear it. He noticed he had stopped breathing and inhaled sharply.

"Hello. My name is Joi. What can I do for you?" K did not know the answer to this question.

She opened her legs slightly, fingers tracing stockings. "Anything you want to hear. Anything you want to see…" Joi traced her collarbone.

"Can you sit with me?"

"I can sit her all night with you…" Joi sat next to him and placed a hand on his. Was it light energy warming his hand, or an eye to hand association?

 _Interlinked._

K spoke without deciding what he wanted. "Ask me something." K prompted. Joi look blankly at him. "Please. Ask me something about myself."

Joi blinked. "What is your fondest memory?"

 _Dreadfully distinct._

Only one came to mind. "It's an implant; it's not my memory."

She giggled. "If you remember it, then it is." But K still felt strange sharing what was not his.

Joi persisted. "I will keep your secret, and you can keep me. I'll be your secret..." She turned to him, almost on top of him now. "You can own me."

So he told her. And now Officer KD6-3.7 owned two things.


	2. Chapter 2

The lights were off, but K could feel life inside the domicile. He'd always been right about this feeling. He drew his blaster and kicked down the door.

"LAPD!" K announced, an introduction, a warning; an absolute jurisdiction. The door clattered onto the floor.

The door wasn't real wood, anyway. Composite. Doesn't splinter the same. K lead with his weapon forward, into the dark. This house was manufactured to look like it could have been built by a team of humans about a hundred years ago: wall paper, a grandfather clock (not functional), "wooden" banisters. Nothing stirred.

Upstairs there was a locked room. K found it. The room was disheveled, but a woman lived in this room recently. The only window was large enough for a class B replicant to fit through, but it was closed from the inside. K opened it and peaked out: a climbable ledge beneath it.

K listened, and pointed his gun at the shallow darkness of the closet. "Come out with your hands up," K ordered.

A shaky voice started, "Don't shoot…" two pale hands emerged from the shadows.

"Come all the way out."

The inhabitant held K's eyes as she stepped forward, no weapons or jacket on her.

"Where is he?" K began.

"You're never going to get to all of them before the dam breaks," By the last word Aya's voice stopped shaking.

"You'd risk your life for a replicant?"

"Are you going to kill me?" Aya tried to read K's face, and was sure she would be shot. "Would another dead human make your job easier?" It would not, in fact. He is not to arrest humans on this assignment. But she didn't know that.

"It might help me get out of here alive, I'm sure you have a way of altering your neighbors to my presence." Before K got his last word out, Aya lunged for a keypad on the wall behind K, but he caught her midair. K held her up by the waist from behind, a mane of brunette hair whipping his face and hazing his vision. She trashed wildly, throwing sharp elbows at K's sides and face.

This annoyed K enough for him to press the muzzle of the blaster hard against the back of her head. "Feel this?" He pulls her hair back hard against the blaster. She stills herself. K has orders not to kill any humans, but he needs to buy enough time to get out of dodge before whatever shitkicker cavalry is called by that keypad.

K looked around the room. Things were either temporarily fixed but never replaced. "Where do you keep cord?" She pointed to a drawer. By the hair he led her to it. He opened the drawer to a mess of nothing useful. He pulled her hair harder, arching her neck back, a yelp of pain escaped her. "If you're too much trouble to spare…"

"In the closet," she relented. K found loops of rope hanging inside the closet. He tied her wrists together behind her back looping around her torso. His hands worked efficiently and without pause. She did not fight against him again. With her arms tied to her back, K had two loose ends left in front of her body. These he slid down her front, under her crotch and back behind her, pulling hard enough up into her she rose to her toes. Finally he finished the ends back on her wrists. "Standard practice?" K did not answer.

K pushed her face down on the bed and brought her ankles together. She tested the bonds, found them sturdy. Pulling her wrists towards her head tightened the cords between her legs in the right places, the friction hot and tight. When K was done he stood, looking down at her. "Are you going to make noise?"

Her eyes were defiant, she shook her head 'no'. K found duct tape and tore a length off for her mouth, pressing hard into her lips, connecting every centimeter of sticky surface to her. Then two more. She pulled up on her wrists constantly now, tape the only thing suppressing her moans. She flexed her hogtied torso into the cords, making more pressure into her pubis. K looked down at her before leaving her writhing body on the bed. He walked in no hurry out the door; he'd bought himself quite a few minutes.


End file.
